Well said, Mark.
JCL | 06.30.04 - 1:43 pm | #

"It's as silly as if I were to write an editorial declaring that I just don't see the point of circumcision and kosher laws and rabbis around the world should just knock off this silly and scandalous custom. Strictly speaking, I have the right to say it, it being a free country and all. But it's still dumb for me, as a Gentile, to tell Jews how to order their internal affairs."

Is this true, strictly speaking? As a Christian don't you claim to know what the authentic practice of Judaism is now that the Messiah has come?

For example, don't we claim, as a matter of fact, that if the Temple were fully reconstructed that offerings made there, with the exception of the Eucharist, would not be efficacious, and thus "silly" and perhaps "scandalous"?
al | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 1:56 pm | #

"As such, non-Catholics have no business telling the Church how to order its internal affairs, just as Catholics have no business telling the local synagogue that they don't like how they order their liturgy and who they allow to participate in it."

Yeah, but they do it anyway, as some of the posters here prove. Christians say things like that all the time in various ways, to the Jewish community. It's dumb whichever direction it goes in. But I read that article, and other than that presumptuous opening paragragh, it was typical Liberal boilerplate, and not some attempt by nefarious jews to dictate to the Church.

All of a sudden an editorial by one liberal paper read by maybe 10% of the Jewish population becomes the mgnate for all the self rightious postering some folks can muster, all masquerading as "Evangelism".

Give me a break.
JanJan | 06.30.04 - 2:01 pm | #

I think it is within a bishop's competence to say that a pol who deliberately and repeatedly flouts the Church's teaching in grave matters *can* be denied communion.

Of course. It would also be true for any parishoner who is not a politician. If, oh, say, Frances Kissling or Dan Brown showed up at the cathedral, should the Bishop go easy on them because they're not office holders?
Mike Morley | 06.30.04 - 2:07 pm | #

JanJan:

Two points. First, as I hope is evident by now, I am not my readers. *I* don't think Catholics should be telling Jews how to order their internal affairs, whatever my readers may think. I believe, of course, that Catholic have an obligation to bear witness to Christ and I believe (along with the apostles) that the New Testament interprets the Old just as the Old foreshadows the New. But I also believe that Catholic must evangelize with respect for Jews and not the contempt that has so often characterized Catholic attitudes toward Jews. I also believe that Catholic understanding of the tradition is immeasurably enriched by coming to a fuller understanding of the Jewish view of revelation.

Second, I made clear in my initial post, by quoting a rabbi no less, that the Forward's editorial was representative of a devotion to secular liberalism, and was not somehow characteristic of "nefarious Jews". I wish you wouldn't muddy the water that way. Devotion to the sacrament of abortion is precisely *not* what real Judaism is about, as the Rabbi himself bears witness. So please don't suggest that my complaint about the Forward was some attempt to indict all Jews of anti-Catholicism.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 2:07 pm | #

JanJan,
Why are you fighting this battle? The comment box doesn't appear to me as bad as you make it - IMO.
JCL | 06.30.04 - 2:07 pm | #

What is "Evangelism"?
al | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 2:08 pm | #

Btw Mark,

Bishop Burke said exactly the same thing with respect to voters for Pro Choice candidates being in mortal sin that Bishop Sheridan did: "Archbishop Raymond Burke said Thursday that Catholics cannot vote for candidates or policies in support of abortion and be worthy to receive Communion.

``We always have to remember that it's objectively wrong to vote for a pro-choice politician,'' Burke told KMOX Radio. ``People could be in ignorance of how serious this is. But once they understand and know this and then willingly do it, vote for a pro-choice candidate, then they need to confess that.''
al | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 2:20 pm | #

Then I think Bishop Burke is exceeding his authority too.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 2:24 pm | #

Then you'd be wrong.
al | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 2:26 pm | #

Mark, I realize *you* were not making those particular connections, but for some reason your style of rhetoric seems to attract those who do. This seems to be a recurring issue on this site.

I am in complete agreement with Rabbi Lapin, though personally I don't find it so egregious that a left leaning Jewish publication behaves in the manner I would expect it to. I don't have to like it, but then I don't like the opinions of plenty of other publications either.
As for whether or not they have any "business" or "right" to, by all means...let them knock themselves out.
JanJan | 06.30.04 - 2:28 pm | #

Back in the early 90's, William F. Buckley had to address the issue of whether Pat Buchanan was anti-semitic. Buckley concluded, in essence, that while Buchanan was probably not anti-semitic, his use of classic anti-semitic tropes such as Jewish financial power, loyalty to a foreign state, etc. raised a fair question of anti-semitism.

I think Buckley had a fair point. Certain arguments carry a historical freight of prejudice. The argument, phrase, theme doesn't stand alone, but because of historical circumstances and tradition can be deeply persuasive on a non-intellectual level because such arguments accord with common sense. For example, everyone knows the Inquisition was bad; no one knows that only 1200 people were killed over 200 years. Likewise a burning cross is not simply a burning cross.

Similarly, in America with its English inheritance, the claim that Catholics are subject to clerical control is "common-sense" and a destructive, pernicious lies. That belief informed the Know-Nothings, a lot of legislation, the attempt to dragoon all children into public schools, and originally a whole bunch of oppression in England. The Forward editorial trades on the historical and cultural assumptions that made that history possible. Frankly, whatever the editorial writer's intent - even if honest and in the best faith - the editorial is effectively an exercise in bigotry just as much as an editorial that darkly suggested that America had been manipulated into war with Iraq by American Jews to serve Israel's interst would be (which, incidentally, was the kind of claim that ultimately got Pat Buchanan barred as a writer for National Review.)
Peter Sean Bradley | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 3:11 pm | #

Mark,

You're spot-on with regard to the editorial.

With regard to Bishop Sheridan and Archbishop Burke, it is sinful to cooperate with evil. Since abortion is objectively evil, the support or promotion of abortion is itself evil and, therefore, sinful. Also, voting for the person who supports abortion is material cooperation with evil, and this is sinful, too.

Fr. Stephen Torraco, a moral theologian, has a voter's guide on EWTN.com and explains the reasoning with more detail.
Damien Horn | 06.30.04 - 4:15 pm | #

Al,

your comment . . ."Then you would be wrong." . . .classic! I laughed . . .sorry Mark. It was just one of those zingers that gets you going.
Paladin of Faith & Reason | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 4:20 pm | #

I wonder whether Forward and its supporters would get similarly upset with the National Organization for Women if that organization were to expel those of its members who, while serving in Congress, voted for pro-life legislation? And if not, why not? (I bet some of those folks are the same guys who don't think Pius XII visited *enough* ecclesiastical penalties on politicians who supported Naziism.)
Seamus | 06.30.04 - 4:56 pm | #

Al quoted Archbishop Burke :-

``We always have to remember that it's objectively wrong to vote for a pro-choice politician,'' Burke told KMOX Radio. ``People could be in ignorance of how serious this is. But once they understand and know this and then willingly do it, vote for a pro-choice candidate, then they need to confess that.''

I have to side with Archbishop Burke and Al here.

Objectively (ie considering the object involved) it is wrong to vote for a pro-abort politician. That some do so in ignorance doesn't mean they sin, but merely that what they do is objectively wrong.

I think Mark hasn't understood the difference.

God Bless
Chris Sullivan | 06.30.04 - 4:59 pm | #

I agree with Chris Sullivan and Al.

JanJan,

I resonded below in the orginal comment box discussion to your accusations that I dont care for the New Catechism.
Paladin of Faith & Reason | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 5:19 pm | #

I still think the difference is that Christians claim OT and early NT Judaism as part of our own canon, which we embrace, and which we therefore have some need (and therefore right) to interpret. Jews, however, reject Christianity and therefore cannot claim to be "making it the best it can be" (to borrow a term from judges interpreting legislation). It would be like Prots or Caths or EOs debating the "proper" interpretation of Mormon doctrines. We could not do that with a straight face, since we believe Mormonism is a false religion (as opposed to an incomplete proto-version of our own).

IOW, if Christians say "We are the true faith of Abraham, Moses and Solomon", asking "So why don't you practice circumcision, keep the Torah, or sacrifice animals in a Temple, as they did?" is a logical question. So we have, logically, a right to answer why not. Whereas asking Mormons "Why aren't you better Protestants?" is as illogical as asking Catholics -- in effect, as here -- "Why aren't you better [modern-day] Jews?"
Tom R | 06.30.04 - 8:01 pm | #

If they were asking us to be Jews, that would another matter entirely. Were a Catholic to tell them to stop it with the circumcisions, and not offer the fullness of the truth, that would be equivalent. Just change a few of your inconvenient beliefs and then you can go die in the dark as far as I care.
Mary | 06.30.04 - 9:34 pm | #

Just consider this... if a "Catholic" paper (I will not even attempt to insert appropriate name, and thus touch off a firestorm over who is "really" Catholic)....or, to get the double bind in, the Irish Echo... were to editorially tell the Episcopal Church how wrong it is to ordain women...

would anyone then attempt to excuse this "telling them how to conduct their internal affairs"?
Will Linden | Homepage | 06.30.04 - 9:44 pm | #

There ARE Catholic papers that do just as you describe, but the Irish Echo is probably so like the Forward on the Catholic side it hardly bears comparison. Rather like most of South Boston, which will vote overwhelmingly Democratic even though both Kennedy and Kerry believe in baby killing.
JanJan | 06.30.04 - 9:55 pm | #

Peter:

Pat Buchanan was never banned from writing in "National Review" by William F. Buckley due to the fact that he had never been associated with that magazine in the first place. This is something Buckley acknowledged in his rambling essay.

You probably are thinking of Joe Sobran who was a major contributor and editor for NR for nearly twenty years, and yes he was another victim of WFB's illogical smear job of December 1991, "In Search of Anti-Semitism." Sobran was fired by NR for revealing the true reason of Buckley's piece some years later in his "Wanderer" column. It appears that Mr. Buckley desired to be accepted by the NYC literary establishment and was afraid of the Trotskyites turned neocons like the Podhoretzes and Kristols. While he personally didn't like Jews he said "how high?" when the neocons said jump. As to the largely Catholic subscriber base of NR when Joe Sobran told Buckley that an elderly couple were saying a daily rosary for him and his magazine, WFB sneared, "you don't need that type of people!" This is the essay that got Sobran fired from NR; it's available at his web site. I, who had been a high school subscriber to "National Review", let my subscription lapse after the anti-Semitism flap after over two decades of loyality.

Now that the great Catholic William F. Buckley has just announced his retirement from the magazine he founded in 1955 we may see his attack on Pat Buchanan a few weeks before the 1992 New Hampshire Republican primary for what it really was. Was he trying to help his fellow Yalie Skull & Bones brother, Bush the Father hold back a challenge from traditional conservatives? Why was the very publicly Catholic William Buckley a member in the quasi-Masonic Skull & Bones order? Why wasn't this discussed in conservative circles? Does Buckley really care which one of his Skull and Bones brothers (Bush the Son or Kerry) win the election this Fall?

So now Mr. Buckley departs "National Review" and leaves it to the young Trotskyite neocons who now infest it. I see by yesterday's paper that Mr. Buckley now sees that the administration lied us into the Iraq war and he would have opposed it if he this knowledge a year ago. It's a good thing he's going before he gets labeled as an "unpatriotic conservative" in the pages of his magazine by Canadian Zionist David Frum as were Sobran and Buchanan last year. Some things never change.
Tom Herron | 07.01.04 - 12:11 pm | #

Tom Herron
Excellent Summary!!!
al | Homepage | 07.01.04 - 12:50 pm | #

Buckley is actually the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sobran is a great philosemite who loves the REAL hebrews, and Jews are actually lizard aliens from another planet.... Saddam Hussein is a Jesuit, Laci peterson is actually Elvis, and I am Princess Anastasia Romanoff.
JanJan | 07.01.04 - 1:44 pm | #

Jan Jan,
Sounds like you may be reading too much David Ickes.
al | Homepage | 07.02.04 - 7:51 am | #